An absent-minded professor's blog.

Indie Game: Happy Birthday

I had been looking for short indie games to play to keep me relaxed when so many stressful things are going on. I found Happy Birthday on Steam Workshop while I was at it. Unfortunately, I couldn’t understand how to download this gem from Steam (it says “Subscribe to Download” but it did not download when I subscribed) so I ended up going to its RPGMaker.net page and downloaded it from there. It’s FREE and is only about an hour long.

“Happy Birthday” first struck me as a point-and-click murder mystery game but since you’re actually controlling a 2D sprite and not pointing and clicking with your mouse, it’s considered a visual novel. The premise of the story is that you are an investigator who’s out to unravel the events behind the brutal murder of a young girl on the night of her birthday party.

It reminds me somehow of Phoenix Wright except you tend to move around the mansion where the murder took place. You also talk to people to fish for clues.

I love the interiors of this game. It’s so…bright and dark at the same time. I don’t know if I’ve even described it correctly.

While you poke around the house and talk to people, you get to accumulate various clues so you can piece the story together. I seriously had fun and am hoping that the creator would release this commercially because I want to say: “Shut up and take my money!!!” I mean, you could create one game with 5 different stories in it, right? That’s how Phoenix Wright games are. They don’t even have to be related.

Anyway for the quirks (a.k.a. QA issues). I’ve read a note somewhere that the Steam version has been updated and my issues have been fixed. I just wish I could get my hands on this version because I cannot understand how Steam Workshop works.

Well, for one thing, because I like to poke a lot, I discovered I can climb the ceiling.

And have a potted plant chop my character’s head off.

There were a few of those collision errors but this is actually not a deal breaker for me. If you finish the story, you might even say that it’s…applicable.

There was one instance when half a sentence had been cut off. I’ve only captured one instance so it’s not a deal breaker either. It helps that I could guess what the other half of the sentence was, based on the context/scenario.

If there’s a way I can donate to this author, I’d gladly do it. This is one way of creating a game using RPGMaker without having to use the battle system. It works and it looks great. Heck, it didn’t even bother me that it’s using a serif typeface because the dialogues are simple yet effective.

I would really love to see more RM games like this! Highly recommended. (I’d give it a 9.5/10 if I could, haha!)

About The Author

Doc B is a crazy cat lady, a former behavioral scientist turned video game producer, and a full professor. She is an INFJ who is married to an INTJ software engineer. You can grab a copy of her book by clicking the book thumbnail below.